I was originally going to post this closer to when the episode officially came out, either during its theatrical run or when it dropped on YouTube so it could be seen by those avoiding spoilers, but with the amount of negativity that's going around in Digital Circus fandom at the moment, I decided that maybe the excuse to express something positive about it is something I'd rather do now than later. I know the episode leaked early, I know a lot of people saw it, and that among those people the general consensus is that it's disappointing. I'm not going to pretend that I didn't watch the leak either, albeit with the intention to watch it again once it's on YouTube so as to support it officially, and I'm not going to pretend that I don't also have complaints about it, but I'm not gonna say any of them here, it's irrelevant to what I have to say.
I wouldn't care if the episode started with Jax eating a barrel full of Carolina Reapers and the rest was just nothing but him on a toilet howling in pain as he shits and it wouldn't change my opinion that everyone involved in the show should have been allowed to use the weeks leading up to release to take a victory lap and really have this moment of accomplishment and the fact that instead they're dealing with the fallout of the leak on top of also having to deal with people digging up drama so old it would be disingenuous to assume it reflects the current views of those involved is a tragedy.
Those complaining about the contents of the episode are allowed to have their opinions, but I think while we're having our opinions it's important right now to keep them in perspective and try to remember why we liked this show in the first place and what we admired about Gooseworx as a creator and not let it all be invalidated just because we didn't like one episode. And if you're one of those people who never liked the show to begin with and never admired Gooseworx as a creator yet still made a point to watch every episode and participate in the discourse, why are you here? Go be invested in a show you like! Hate-watching is for stupid people!
For me personally, what I loved about Digital Circus from the start, and apparently a lot of other people must have too considering it kickstarted the trend of everyone and their dog putting out their own animated pilots, was that it made indie animation finally look like a tangible goal. We all just kinda accepted that with YouTube's algorithm being the way it is, and needing exposure from the algorithm to fund a project through Patreon, that it's just impossible to profit off of animation if you don't work for Warner Bros. or Disney, or already have a fanbase from before that was the case, so a dream that I'd had since I was ten years old and got a copy of Macromedia Flash as a Christmas gift...I gave up on it, I pursued what I believed to be more "realistic" creative endeavors on a different handle from this one. Then I saw Digital Circus, I saw a show where even with my limited experience in programs like Blender I could see that the characters were carefully designed to get around the most tedious parts of rigging, the premise of taking place inside a 90s video game justified the primitive rendering style, (particularly on the earlier episodes, later episodes got away from that a bit) even as someone who barely knows anything about 3D modeling or animation I saw a show that at least visually turned its weaknesses into strengths, making compromises to simplify and speed up the animation process that come off so organic that they don't immediately appear as compromises. Not that nobody else has ever had to do that before, Digital Circus was just the one that made me think "wait, I could do that." I'll probably never have the skill or knowhow to make something in Blender that looks like Disney or Dreamworks or even Jimmy Neutron, but I could probably make something that looks like Digital Circus. Then I had a flashback to the Summer of 2018 when Thundercats Roar was announced and it was a big controversy, personally I was on the side of being upset that the legacy of a franchise I care about was being mistreated, especially when action cartoons like the previous two Thundercats shows were basically extinct, like why greenlight a PARODY of something that practically doesn't exist anymore? At least when Freakazoid parodied superhero cartoons they did it at a time when those were in ABUNDANCE! But one Tumblr post from the pro-Roar side of the debate always stuck with me, it went something like "if you wanna see action cartoons make a comeback, just download an animation program and do it yourself" or something like that. I hate to admit it because I can feel myself from 2018 ready to chest-burst out of me and kick current-me in the balls for even thinking it, but that person did kinda have a point, they may have said it in the most wienerish possible context by using it to deflect well-earned criticism, but in a vacuum outside of that context they had a point. At the time, I hated that post because it came off so obtuse. I was like "How in the FUCK am I supposed to make something like Ben 10 or Danny Phantom BY MYSELF!?" But now I get it. You do it by accepting it won't be as polished as a Warner Bros. or Disney production, and you creatively present it in a way where it comes off as a deliberate artistic choice.
Speaking of Ben 10 and Danny Phantom, if you think that's the wrong thing to take away from a production that was able to hire a team of animators, then consider that just three days after Digital Circus premiered, YouTube channel TheInkTank started putting out a motion comic adaptation of their webcomic 5 Years Later, and it even further conveys this idea, with the animation being significantly simpler to the point of being Hanna-Barbera-esque, because all it is is just comic book panels sliding around the screen, but with audio assets like music, sound effects, voice acting, and being so well-edited to the audio, that's really all it took to feel less like I was reading a comic book with an audio track like those Disney read-along books that came with tapes (anyone else remember those?) and more like I was watching a cartoon that simply had a comic book style presentation. And since 5 Years Later is a superhero show, the comic book style presentation comes off as seamless, it adds to the immersion rather than subtracts from it. And if you think I shouldn't take that away from TheInkTank considering that although they have less hands on deck than Glitch does, they still have more than you or I could probably get to help us, then consider the recent success of Planetronika, a pilot made by four people aside from the voice actors, only one of which handled all the animation by himself.
If there's anything to take away from the rise of indie animation, it should be that there's no excuses anymore. That's what we've been doing all those years we'd complain about indie animation just not being a thing online outside of simple little Newgrounds Flash shorts and bemoaning the domination of corporations like Warner Bros. and Disney for being pretty much the only game in town, at least in America, we were making excuses, because it was easier to do that than accept the risk of busting our asses possibly for years on something and not getting rewarded for it but doing it anyway because you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
That's why I'm in the early stages of development on Lila Storm: Art of Power, I wouldn't be if not for the domino effect Digital Circus had on the animation scene, and I'm more proud of the work that's been done so far than I've been pretty much anything I've ever done creatively in my life, even though I'm sure it probably won't catch on, probably won't see a fraction of the success Digital Circus did, hell it probably won't even touch Planetronika, but at least I'll be able to say I did more than all the people who responded to the Gameoverse pilot saying "Glitch should take a chance on someone with less than 500 followers and let them make REAL art instead of this SLOP" and stopping just short of saying "and by that I mean MEEEEE it should have been MEEEEE," I'd rather be a loser because I tried and failed than be a loser because I was too piss-scared of failure to try. That's why I think everyone on Digital Circus should be allowed to take their victory lap regardless of what we think of the finale, they just got finished with something pretty much anyone can theoretically do, but so many would rather sit on their asses complaining than START it let alone FINISH it. That's admirable, that's worth celebrating, that's why I say-
THANK YOU @gooseworx , on the off chance you read all this
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
